April 14, 2010

How Much More of This Man Can Michigan Take?

The first step is acknowledging you have a problem.

The second step is doing something about it.

Tuesday's revelation that the NCAA has been sniffing around West Virginia — Rich Rodriguez's employer from 2001-07 — can only be viewed as bad news at Michigan — the university currently signing his checks.

The NCAA alleged in February that Michigan had committed five potentially major rules violations, and by digging into Rich Rod's past, the NCAA — at the very least — was trying to see if there was a pattern of rules violations dating to the coach's days in Morgantown.

"There is no new NCAA investigation involving the University of Michigan," athletic director David Brandon said.

That's the good news, if you believe Brandon, who has been on the job all of 98 days. The bad news is that plenty of people in Morgantown, still bitter over Rich Rod's ugly departure, were likely willing to talk at length to NCAA investigators.

Yes, payback is a bitch.

It has been one disaster after another for Rich Rod, who is 8-16 since he arrived in Ann Arbor, and perhaps it's time for Michigan to cut and run.

Dhani Jones, a three-time all-Big Ten linebacker at Michigan in the 1990s, says Rich Rod has run the program into the ground.

"I'm not cool with him," Jones told Jim Rome on Tuesday. "I'm at my wits end right now. I mean, you can't come in and explain that you're going to do all this, and then your first year? Terrible. Second year? Alright — but then terrible. You have to be able to change something if you're really going to make a statement. You have to do it within the first two years, and this is his third."